


Venom

by TheMarauderBandit



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Mirror Universe, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 03:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4331832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMarauderBandit/pseuds/TheMarauderBandit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dystopia AU in which James T. Kirk and Leonard McCoy are cadets working in toxic air, Spock is considered the prince of the army base, and Gaila runs the entire world. Multi-chapter, novel-length.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Venom

Chapter 1

It was late morning when the first call for cadets came on the intercom, and by that point, Jim had successfully waster four hours in the canteen not eating a damn thing but the fingernails of everyone who dared be around him. Which was one person: Bones, the man working towards being a medic in the war. When the call came, Jim jumped, and his eyes slipped towards the window in the corner of the camp’s cafeteria, looking like it had been painted yellow. This part of the world, the air was rotten with chemicals and dust, and it was the optimal base for those training to fight. Jim pulled the goggled over his eyes, and switched the gears so he could see.

“Don’t know why you’re so scared of an evaluation,” came Bones’ eternally frustrated voice as he took another plunging bite into poorly-made scrambled eggs. The doctor blinked lazily up towards his best friend. “You’re training for war—what’s gonna happen to you? You gonna fail? You gonna die? Oh, so scary!”

Jim growled over towards his bitter friend, and shook his head. “Eat your damn sausage and drink some coffee before you piss someone off. You’ll be sorry when I’m dead by tonight,” he snapped in return before he pulled a handkerchief over his mouth, and tightened the gloves on his hands.

Outside, wind howled and tore at the strips of his clothing; around were gas masks and vortexes of wind, and on the hill was a single pole, having once carried the flag which had been stolen by the wind. There were clusters, silhouettes of men traveling in packs, jogging along on paths so beaten down they were packed in like asphalt. Commands were as faint as the buzz of a mosquito in an ear, but after a while, one grew real used to straining one’s ears.

Just across from the Mess Hall, through a half a mile of dust and muck and silt, surrounded by one large hill and a mile’s worth of electrical fence, rested the small building that carried the watch tower and the lieutenant admiral’s barracks. Jim personally had never been inside, but he knew every inch of it from the rumors. The walls were black, he’d heard, mounted with the skulls of animals, of unidentified creatures, of maybe even humans. And there were cameras watching your every movement—if you so much as sneezed with the lieutenant’s permission, you were show down, and killed on the spot. And the rumors about Lieutenant Pike were even more intimidating. Jim had plenty of reason to worry.

The doors slid open before him without command, without warning, and much to his surprise. With a metallic clanking sound that made Jim feel like steel was shooting through his teeth and all around him, the gates stuck open and the great building was left exposed to the violent winds all around. If Jim could hardly see a thing out here, in the pungent yellow air, with his protective glasses and a weathered eye, how could those inside the building know it was him? For all they knew, it could’ve been some pale-faced, freckle-splattered first year who wandered off of his parole and got lost in the storm.

But the gate was open, and it gave him the creeps. Jim had been trained better than to question it— in fact, he’d been trained all his life for this. From crawling around, knees skinned and hands scraped back in the wide plains of Iowa to now, having run every inch of this training base until his feet could recognize its ground, until his eyes could close and it’d be like floating to the cafeteria, to the barracks, to the badly-funded gym with only two complete sets of dumbbells. This was just another drill being pounded into his head, the words like well-versed poetry in his mind, another news report saying “our world is dying! But look! New items! Bad news! The dust is clearing, but we’re dying!”

Well, Jim thought bitterly, his footsteps coming onto soft, barely-tread but beaten down by tires dirt as he climbed towards the front door, they should try coming out to California. The air is definitely clearing out here, Jim’s mind snarled and he straightened the cloth over his mouth.

His gloves hands, rough with worn-down leather clasped on bolted metal handles. His fingers wiggled to get the best grip on it, and then his heels dug into the powdery ground, and he willed all the years of his training into his body to get the strength to even move the colossal door, and then he heaved. If Jim hadn’t been so securely planted, he would’ve fallen straight down onto his ass. The door rolled open like water off of a frog’s back. Smooth, Kirk.

It was light as a feather. Inside was dark, shadows sending a chill up his back as the vacuum of black sucked up all the light that could’ve spread in. There was no proper procedure for this situation. The cadets who made it all the way here—those who have completed all the sections of their training and were at least 21, that is—didn’t usually come back. There was talk of this situation often, the topic of the murmurings in the hallways and the focal point of the nightmares, which wracked the bunks at night.

So he squared his shoulders and stepped inside like a good little soldier.

Jim blinked once, and he missed one million things. While his eyes were closed, the door thundered shut, and there was a flicker of light, a gun to his back and the general feeling of the cluster of others grouped around him. His vision was tainted darker grey, in a melancholy contrast, but he could still see that at least a single rumor was true. The black hole, the vacuum he had assumed he was walking into was truly just a wall, sinister and soft on his eyes. Guards were stone-faced, mask less, morbid and right in his personal space.

There was no audible exchange, but Jim felt like a prisoner as he instinctively put his hands up, and his weapon was taken from his hip where it rested all night and all day, where he’d been told by the people now taking it to put it. The barrel of a gun nuzzled his lower back and the group walked with him down the hall. The cadet found his goggles and pushed them from his eyes into windblown hair, leaving grime on his already smudged skin. No big. If he survived, he would use his weekly shower token to clean it all off. The same clear, sharp line was left just over his mouth, and his eyes met the squeaky clean guard’s faces enviously.

Step after step, they trekked on, and Jim’s bright eyes searched this small, unfairly luxurious haven up and down for sign of danger. He was always looking for one. Call it natural instinct, but his happenings with the decaying population of Earth pointed towards experience. His brain, however, was left impressed by the cleanliness of the halls he was being led down. No windows, just shadows filtered everywhere. They went down a large, winding corridor that made Jim question how the hell this damn place fit in the small, constrictive shell that was displayed and shown on the outside.

As his eyes roamed curiously around the hallways and at the soldiers’ unyieldingly stoic faces, his blue eyes caught a little glint of something up above. Goggles slid back as his head tilted upwards; even if they had fallen, Jim probably wouldn’t have had the chance to go back for them at the speed the group was walking. Jim was even a little cautious about breaking the stride, if even just barely, but when he did, the gun was just pressed deeper into his back and they all morphed to accommodate to his newly defined pace. Which was very thoughtful of them, because it gave Jim more time to examine the vents he had just discovered on the ceiling. They were large and painted black to mirror the rest of the suffocating passage. At first glance, they were unimportant, but bolted shut, and if Jim strained hard enough, he could hear some sort of disturbance being emitted from the slots. At small intervals, like shouts, only sometimes. Jim tried not to smile or drown at his discovered and focused on being just as statuesque as his escorts. Some naïve part of him was hoping that they hadn’t seen a thing.

Around every corner, Jim was on edge, his heart would leap to his throat in anticipation, and his muscles tensed even if they knew that he wouldn’t be able to do anything shoulder something pose a threat. When they all turned the last corner, however, Jim’s muscles remained stiff, and they didn’t instinctively relax as they had previously. Faced with a door that loomed higher than what seemed like the tower itself and was larger than this entire base folded together. Reason told him that this entrance was neither of these, but fear was telling him that this had to’ve been built for something not human, that he was in the wrong place. As his eyes traced the metal black, the ever-observant cadet took note of something else particularly abnormal.

Jim had seen cameras before in his short life, though it wasn’t instantly recognized once his eyes laid upon it. The device was poised just at the corner of the wall, or what little wall there was between the ceiling and the door. It was bashed in, its lens bugging out and almost invisible in the lack of light. So much for every move of his being watched. That had certainly been made up for with the small population of guards. Seriously, what am I going to do? He snarked to himself. Break another camera? Float up there with my wings?

With another clink, Jim was roughly dragged from his daydreaming thoughts and his snooping went from the cameras to the single guard plugging in codes, many of them, to match the ridiculous amount of locks. Jim tired not to watch the man’s hands—not that he’d ever remember all of the keys, not that he would probably even have the chance to come back. It was clear that he was a goner, with these circumstances, in any situation, having been called without warning. Jim didn’t often pine over delicacies in his life (he didn’t get many of them), but faced with the gear’s clicking and shifting inside the door, standing just before his doom, Jim could only think of Bones.

His only, and true best friend. The one who pulled him up in the mornings when he couldn’t manage it himself, the one who complained at him while hugging him after a rough day. Leonard McCoy was an outstanding man, as far as Jim was concerned. Best doctor in this corner of the world, but absolutely unbearable without his morning coffee. It was ridiculous how he could remember that—that they had created some form of a routine even with their dismal outlook—death by war. At four, he woke up and went running while Bones struggled to get out of bed, and then he returned just in time (0445) to shower before breakfast. Leonard at that point would have a mug of coffee in his hand and a scowl on his face. They would go to breakfast together, train together, and then eat dinner together, and Jim’s life had never felt more completely than it did as he disintegrated into the world. It was wonderful.

The euphoria broke away almost at once as he was shoved into the huge room that lingered before him. The rest of them stepped away, and left him face to face with the Lieutenant, the desk, and the curtains that were draped onto ugly-patterned wallpaper. Jim had met Lieutenant Pike many times before this, considering that was the man who had dragged him all the way to this base to start training to begin with. This was the man who had been the first to believe in him, but when facing the warm comfort of his life, Jim could only feel the cold of the room. His lips silently closed and he could taste the chemicals of the air that had seeped through his "mask". They formed grit on his tongue, and with a disgusted face, he rolled them back out of his mouth. It was bitter, and the air was sour, like he was inhaling rotten milk. 

Pike continued to work feverishly at his desk as though the screeching, mechanical door hadn't just crawled itself open, as though a very grubby Jim Kirk hadn't been shoved through the doorway.

Very light eyes slowly, surely and to create suspense, went up from his work and to Jim. Every twitch of his face was solemn enough to make Jim rethink swallowing and standing here. Accepting the offer to come and train, anyways. A rock lodged in his throat, and his hands kneaded together, allowing him to give a frown. Pike wasn't necessarily a serious man by all means-- he had snuck him in against the rules and winked at him from across the room some days, and he was nothing but a father to him. 

To prove it, Pike spoke calmly: "Son," and his voice echoed throughout the room, his throat worn and voice neglected, "Have I got news for you." 

X

When Jim was younger, his brother used to practice dancing in front of the licking flames of the fireplace. With the beat of the song hanging in his head, he would sit with his hands on his knees and his legs folded like a pretzel on the wooden floor, and he would sway as Sam’s footsteps did. His brother would always claim that it was for homecoming, but every winter night, with the crackle of the flames and the warmth flushing on his colored face, Sam would be dancing. When his uncle wasn’t looking, Sam would be dancing, with even a mundane task, such as transferring a bowl of fruit from the counter to Jim’s table, and then he would hook his foot and twist, socks sliding on the floor, and he would twirl off towards the fridge for a bowl of fruit himself.

At that point, Jim had already understood passion, and so he had a fairly good grasp on Sam’s need for his dance. It was his passion. What Sam loved. Like his mother had loved his father, and like how Jim loved his mother. Of course, he couldn’t understand why Sam never let anyone else know, and why he wouldn’t let Jim say anything about it. They would sit at the dinner table, and Jim, talkative and young as always would be picking at the broccoli on his plate, and would off-handedly say: “Hey, Sammy, I found a song today at school that has this really nice chorus, you’d be real good at—,” and his sentences would never finish, because then there would be the heel of a calloused foot in his shin, and that was the universal sign for shut up you prick, you’re saying too much.

It was because of his uncle, as Jim learned. When he first started showing a passion in stars instead of in cars, his uncle would tell him that he had gotten it wrong, and he would go from basking in the light of thousands of celestial bodies, to sulking under the flickering glow of the old garage bulb.

As he grew from middle school to high school, the transition from complaining about everything to fighting everything went a little less smoothly than one could’ve hoped, and Jim began to complain against his uncle. Stupid bastard didn’t know shit about his life, anyways. It earned him more than a couple black eyes, and he still had the scars to prove that he’d been hit with a belt at seventeen years old, but he’d done it. He’d defied every adult human that he could find, and then he’d convinced Sam to join his movement, that they didn’t have to live here anymore, but his brother had already graduated high school, and made the comment that maybe he’d left his childhood there, but it was finished, now.  
With the same passion in which he disregarded Sam’s ignorance to how much this meant to Jim, Jim himself had gone on to eventually fight Frank enough that he was kicked from the house, but at least, when living on the streets, somehow, he could stargaze.

With the same passion in which he had cut off all contact with the traitor who had indiscreetly told him his entire life to be who you are, but you damn well better be careful about it, Jim had found himself in a bar one night, admiring stars that weren’t in the skies, getting his ass handed to him by a couple of guys who were like Franks in his life.

He’d met Pike this way, and the lieutenant had been shadowed by the mask, but still there was a light unlike any other in his eye when he inspected the bruises on his cheeks. No one could piss a guy off that badly to get those unless he really had some sort of control over his life. Either blind control or insanity as hard to swallow as bourbon. And so Jim had passionately worked in order to get his life up to Pike’s standards, to get him to believe in him even more, because not just a standard level of acceptance was necessary in Jim’s heavily acceptance-neglected life. Jim had to mean more to the Lieutenant than any other cadet did.

But Jim had never expected to go far with his passion. He was expecting to fizzle out someday like every schoolteacher and doctor and step-father had ever said to him. You’re gonna die out, Jimmy. You’re not gonna make it far, now that you’ve accomplished something. What are you gonna? Stress your talents out more? This only brought the cold shock of Pike’s summoning to his entire body much more startling, and he felt like he’d just been grabbed by the arms and shoved face-first into the snow.  
Their conversation had gone somewhat shortly, because Pike didn’t want to argue and fight anymore when he was already facing war with the rest of the world, and Jim didn’t want to end up dead on the side of the road, because he had a life to protect.

“The admiral has called you directly to the main base. Everyone there wants you, Jim. They’ve seen your work, they’ve seen your training, your stats.” Pike’s hand waved helplessly over the files that were splayed out in front of him, and the creases at the corners of his mouth betrayed how fiercely he was trying not to smile. This was a word where someone didn’t smile, they begrudgingly nodded their head in respect, and allowed the other to keep passing them by.

Jim paused. “What does that mean?” It was a simple thing to grasp, but Pike knew exactly what he meant; was there danger for him? Hidden meanings? Was he in trouble, was he going to die? Would he be erased like every other cadet that dared to ever do more than just work around here.

The lieutenant answered: “You’re being promoted, not punished. All the training that you’ve been doing for the past—how many years has it been, now?”

“Three, sir,” Jim said.

“All the training that you’ve been doing for the past three years has finally paid off.” It occurred to Jim that the paperwork he’d been doing was paperwork on him. “The admiral has requested you personally. You’ll be shipped off this afternoon. I’ve already had soldiers break in and box all your personal belongings. They’re safe and they’ll be returned to you instantly.”

A film-like sequence played through his active mind of Bones fighting against the soldiers to keep them from grabbing all of Jim’s stuff. It started with a smile, and then he slowly began to realize that Bones would think he was dead. His poor, cantankerous doctor would be hitting walls and hitting soldiers and hitting just about everything else because he thought he was dead, and Jim’s moment of pride, of I made it faded into darkness, because he was nothing without Leonard McCoy. Slowly, his fingers pressed into the desk, just the pads of them, like he was a politician about to make the greatest argument of the century. “Bones comes with me.”

The darkness, the deepness of his voice took even Pike by surprise, and the Lieutenant’s thumb paused in folding the papers back into the small stack that he’d made of them, both eyebrows furrowing. “They requested you.”

“Yeah, I know. But Bones comes with me. I need him, he’s the only reason I’ve survived this far, he’s the only reason that your little committee of higher-ups wants me so bad. This is the only way I can ensure that he’s not in danger. If I leave him here, then I know I’ll have no way of contacting him. No way of getting to him. I’d be abandoning him, and Pike… sir… I can’t do that. I’m taking him.”

Pike played it like he was actually considering Jim’s proposition, like he was considering the argument that he’d provided, but they both knew that it wasn’t his decision to make. Even if Pike had decided that Leonard was really the best thing for Jim to succeed at this point, he couldn’t do anything about it. Jim was a little more than frustrated, but he sucked it back, and waited. His weight still rested in his fingertips, and those eyes of him did some good with how intensely they watched Pike’s every movement, looking for a telling sign. He watched as fingernails scratched the stubble on his cheeks, and his tongue ran over his tongue, and it took a moment to understand that Pike was staring at the papers in thought, trying to read through a way to drag Bones with him. Jim was a stubborn kid.

It was well-known. He was the kid who refused to move when they wouldn’t buy a cot for him to sleep on. “I paid good money for this!” He had argued, and the guards had pushed him, but Jim had pushed back. Two whole days, he stood there, and at some point, Leonard had come, and dragged him by his collar back to his damn room. It was no surprise to see that they couldn’t be separated.

“Well, they did say to do most of anything in my power to get him to their base as soon as possible. And seeing as you’re sitting here arguing with me, it’s not like you’re rushing over there in any short amount of time.” Pike could kick him out. But the smile that just barely crossed his chapped lips was enough to tell Jim was his decision was. The kid’s hands furled into fists to avoid whooping with joy. They were getting out of there! They were free! “I guess the only way to get you there was to agree to this. It is in my power to send people off towards the general base, just not to the Admiral. Doctor McCoy can come with you.”

Jim wanted to run from that room as fast as his well-trained legs could carry him, but he waited for dismissal, the air staying sharp with the exhilaration rolling off of the cadet, but otherwise dead silent. There was the slight scratching of Lieutenant Pike’s pen as he pulled one from the side of the desk, and pulled out a sheet of paper that Jim could only guess was for Leonard—they were gonna be free!—and then began to scribble onto it in his loose, officially unofficial handwriting. His teeth began to chew down onto the grit again, and his eyes lit up as his feet began to shift from foot to foot again. He felt like a child again, mimicking Sam’s complicated dance moves, and trying to learn them for himself so that he could be as impressive as his older brother.

The second that the paper was finished, Jim had snagged it, and the words “give this to the guards outside” almost fell on deaf ears. Jim didn’t care about procedure, he cared about getting all his shit and showing Leonard that he was alive and hugging him and maybe, just maybe, getting out of there without any further hesitation. He was free.

Well, sort of. War could hardly be considered freedom, but the army bases that held the Admiral couldn’t possibly be as poor in shape and quality as this damn place. There was probably food there. Clean air. Cadets that were confident, competent, who knew what they were doing, and didn’t hesitate about a thing. People he could work with. He was just about to go rushing down the hall, the doors creaking open with Pike’s command, and then there was very suddenly an arm in his stomach, and it crushed his belly, and there was a moment of fear, a split-second of fear that Jim was very uncertain as to what exactly was happening to him. They had just meant to stop him, right?

Wide eyes focused in on the guards, who expressed no emotion, and Pike said nothing, despite his clear window, his clear view from the desk. Shakily, thinking that he had done something wrong, Jim handed over the paper, and then fixed the mask over his face eyebrows furrowing. The goggles still rested on his head, and uncertainly, he watched. One of the guard’s gloved hands came to his hairline, and pointed towards where they rested. A breath of relief ripped through Jim. They were just trying to protect him.

Were there really humans under the suits? Was there something to finally believe in around here? Jim wasn’t sure, and they grabbed his elbow, and began to escort him down the hall, quicker than previously, towards the door of the base. He slipped the grey glasses over his eyes, and braced himself for the clogged air before him.

**Author's Note:**

> Any comments and suggestions are so welcomed! I'd love to answer questions that anyone may have, and if you find errors, please let me know. Feedback is appreciated, because feedback is what helps keep me going. Thank you very much!


End file.
